Post by Friendly Destroyer on Jul 29, 2011 15:31:15 GMT -8

I'll admit that I haven't done a whole lot of investigating on this new Winnie the Pooh, but if it is still that wonderful hand drawn style I saw as a kid I would gladly pay the ticket fee. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing hand drawn animation on the big screen. Well there is, but it's more so just other sorts of anologue animation... and Adrian Brody... and Penelope Cruz... and high speed high def beaker explosions... and great writing... and so okay, there's lots of beauty on the big screen folks but I'll gladly pay for a sure thing, even if it is in a small dose, rather than a 4hr long robo-suckyfest.

Post by ComesWithASword on Aug 4, 2011 15:52:29 GMT -8

So stoked. One of the best casts in recent memory. Albert Brooks as the bad guy? Awesome. Not really digging the slow-mo violence set to operatic music though. Dude's last movie, Bronson, had a lot of it and I didn't care for it that much. Pointless exercise is style that wanted to be A Clockwork Orange except it wasn't. Tom Hardy is pretty great in it though. But yeah, Drive will probably be good.

Post by Friendly Destroyer on Aug 15, 2011 7:28:22 GMT -8

Another Earth – Review and Spoilers

So I saw a preview for Another Earth about 3 months ago and thought it looked pretty damn cool. It had that whole feel of “It’s a sci-fi SyFy story, but the kind of sci-fi SyFy story where the sci-finess SyFyness is a big idea but always something that lingers in the background to add an existential weight to a more intimate and personal story”. A story that isn’t really revealed all that much in the preview, but you definitely get the idea that the main character has done bad, or is bad or was bad and under normal circumstances would have a hard time reconciling this possible badness she has done, did, or is. Cue the appearing of an identical planet Earth, which has a duplicate of yourself, coming into view and the possibility of being able to take a rocket ship up there and start over. GAME CHANGER! Right? I mean this could totally work as a movie, plus there is snow and coldness which somehow feels very Russian Sci-Fi SyFy. Your Thinking Man’sSci-Fi SyFy (Duh?), not your grandpa’s tentacle one eyed monster sci-fi syfy, which was still definitely cool and if I am to believe my own grandpa had people convinced they needed to move to Australia (I guess tentacled space aliens can’t find it on a map?) in order to avoid being attacked by the very probable tentacle low grade puppet effect monster scenario. Yikes, the old times. Anyway, this looked to be more of that “This makes me feel smart and self satisfied and not like a crazy person whose never heard of an iPad or is afraid of rubber puppets” Sci-Fi SyFy. We all like to feel this way (smart and self-satisfied), right? What a very compassionate and not at all annoying way to feel around people (friends love it!). So with my best ascot, horned rimmed glasses, tweed jacket, and a copy of JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey tucked under my arm I was off to the cinema. Hurrah!

Spoilers: So the bad thing she does is drunkenly crash into a family’s SUV killing the mom and child (Dad lives) on the first night of the Other Earth’s appearance. A very bad thing for sure. Go to jail for your bad thing! And she does . The rest of the story is your typical (so typical Hollywood) “I think the person whose life I have completely destroyed would appreciate me turning my own very need to make things right by be-friending/be-fucking them, for their sake of course, (a gift if you will?Gross, no.) and then after all the be-friending/be-fucking has brought them away from the brink of hopelessness and despair (“Make me feel good!”) tell them I KILLED YOUR FAMILY!. Can we still be fuck buddies? Uh no, and don’t call me I’ll call you. Probably.

Now I get and appreciate that as human beings we are all incredibly flawed and struggle with what is right and what is wrong and how do I make a wrong right? It’s tough stuff for sure (a pat on our collective human backs for dealing with these things on a daily basis). I also understand the self destructive tendencies that occur when a person feels like they don’t deserve any good in their lives because of killing 2/3rds of a family. A very heavy and emotionally complicated story you’ve decided to tell Another Earth. You could have been about trucks who turn into robots but you are not. Good for you! But bad for you for glossing over how a story like this really would play out and making things seem very easy and very fixable.

Basically the girl, Rhoda, comes out of prison at the age of 22, gets a job as a janitor at her high school (because SYMBOLISM for the mess she needs to clean up, “Guilty Conscience spill in the art room! Janitor to the art room!”), submits an essay to be the only other civilian out of 6 billion people to go to the Other Earth on a rocket ship (she wins of course, because that’s how the odds work), goes to the man’s house of the family she destroyed and pretends she is a here to offer a Free Cleaning (great plan!). He’s like “where’s your cleaning stuff?”, she’s like “whoops!” and then he’s like well this all seems normal enough “you can use my cleaning stuff”. Slow and steady they become Wii Sports Boxing pals (of course they do!) and the Man realizes that perhaps all happiness and possibility didn’t die along with his family in that car crash long ago. Oh and in case you were wondering, he doesn’t know Rhoda is his family’s manslaughterer because his brother destroyed all the court records because he told his brother he would kill that person if he ever found out who it was. Number one, Yikes! Number two, thanks for explaining this to the audience! She then gets him re-interested in his passion for music that he used to have when he was a professor of classical music at Yale before his life fell apart. Which naturally brings us to a scene of him playing a singing saw in an empty auditorium to Rhoda. This is the way life and Yale professors of CLASSICAL music works. This is also the way “let’s sleep with each other” works. So they sleep with each other and we’re all like, “Why Rhoda? Why?” even though we understand the why is because, “It’s complicated.”, but still “Why??”. Then she finds out that she wins the Other Earth vacation contest. So she tells the guy she needs to go (but she doesn’t say I need to go “because I feel like I have no right to exist on this planet because I killed your family”. No she doesn’t say that yet. Instead she says “I need to go”, which of course devastates the Man because he was finally getting back to feeling like a human being and picking the ol’ singing saw up again. What a blow, how can it get worse for this guy? Easy. When he keeps protesting that she doesn’t leave, she tells him “BTW, I killed your family”. Ouch, the ol’ one-two punch to the gut. Anyways, how can she possibly clean up this mess (she doesn’t even own her own cleaning supplies for god’s sake!). Easy. She winds up giving him her spot to visit the Other Earth. Done and done.

Well that was easy. I wish we could all just ship our problems into outer space. That would be very convenient. Usually a person in these types of stories needs to make a major personal sacrifice which allows those they’ve harmed and themselves to let go of their grief and move on. Because making things right comes with a cost. But not apparently in this movie. Rhoda doesn’t lose out by not going to space, she only wanted to go because she wanted to not be reminded of the horror she brought into her life on Earth. I’ll add that her family seems really supportive and loving, so it’s not like she needed to make a huge gesture that would show others she is back to even Steven. Instead she sends her constant source of guilt through the stratosphere and now can live comfortably on her own Earth. Win win, I guess? No, not at all! The movie doesn’t even try to expositional away the obvious dilemma of the man arriving on Earth 2 only to find his family alive, but also very much in love and living with his own Earth 2 self. What happens then? Awkward! Good luck buddy, all the best, keep practicing that singing saw! This movie could have really benifited from some rubber alien tentacle monsters that force our entire species to move to the safe haven of Australia. The Uhg.